"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Human beings, the philosophers tell us, are social animals. We emerge into the world ready to connect with mom and dad. We go through life jibbering and jabbering with each other, grouping and regrouping. When you get a crowd of people in a room, the problem is not getting them to talk to each other; the problem is getting them to shut up. . . .

After hundreds of words of such blather — “Nazi and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi, Sunni and Shiite,” and a dollop of Trollope — he finally gets around to making his point:

Once partisan reconciliation is used for this bill, it will be used for everything, now and forever. The Senate will be the House.

Kazart! He’s talking about the health-care bill! The man went seven paragraphs before bothering to mention Congress and didn’t mention “health care” until the 11th paragraph! No one is interviewed, no one (except Trollope) is quoted, and there isn’t even a pretense that anything we might call reporting or research was involved in this column.

Brooks extracted his 802-word opus directly from the ether, or from his frontal lobes, or perhaps from some less cerebral region of his anatomy. This is why Sulzberger pays him the big bucks.

The comprehensive nature of Brooksian douchbaggery, which has been a regular topic at this blog for two years, attracts the notice today of Ezra Klein and Jonathan Chait — a pair of Johnny-come-lately Brooks-bashers who actually try to argue with the pompous fool.

Amateurs! Brooks should never be argued with — he should be mocked, and often, and by someone who knows how.

People in the person-to-person mode are soft, unpredictable and hard to organize.

It might shock Brooks, but a lot of people don’t want to be organised like paperclips on a desk; the goal is not to have some higher authority (preferably armed with a degree from some snooty college) tell us how to live our lives, but to actually live them ourselves.

In the United States, leaders in the House of Representatives have done an effective job in getting their members to think in group, not person-to-person, terms. In the United States, leaders in the House of Representatives have done an effective job in getting their members to think in group, not person-to-person, terms.

Of course! We could enter a post-partisan utopia, get the most insane and harmful legislation in America to pass with the consent of 435 members of the House, and give ponies to everyone if only we could all see each other as humans with tender feelings.

Makes perfect sense.

A few years ago, when Republican leaders tried to pass judicial nominations on party-line votes, rank-and-file members like Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton spoke out forcefully against rule by simple majority.

How flipping stupid is this guy? Seriously?

When Obama “spoke out” against the “rule by simple majority”, what he meant is that a Republican President had no right to put Sam Alito and John Roberts on the Supreme Court. When Biden spoke out, he meant that there are two sets of rules: one for the nominees of Republican presidents, one for nominees he likes.

Let’s be clear: during the VP debates, Biden bragged about having created one of the most partisan debacles in memory, in which the Constitution has been held hostage to the power-hunger of the Democrats.

But Brooks lauds him. Can you have a negative number of brain cells? Sort of like matter and anti-matter?

People in the person-to-person mode are soft, unpredictable and hard to organize.

It might shock Brooks, but a lot of people don’t want to be organised like paperclips on a desk; the goal is not to have some higher authority (preferably armed with a degree from some snooty college) tell us how to live our lives, but to actually live them ourselves.

In the United States, leaders in the House of Representatives have done an effective job in getting their members to think in group, not person-to-person, terms. In the United States, leaders in the House of Representatives have done an effective job in getting their members to think in group, not person-to-person, terms.

Of course! We could enter a post-partisan utopia, get the most insane and harmful legislation in America to pass with the consent of 435 members of the House, and give ponies to everyone if only we could all see each other as humans with tender feelings.

Makes perfect sense.

A few years ago, when Republican leaders tried to pass judicial nominations on party-line votes, rank-and-file members like Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton spoke out forcefully against rule by simple majority.

How flipping stupid is this guy? Seriously?

When Obama “spoke out” against the “rule by simple majority”, what he meant is that a Republican President had no right to put Sam Alito and John Roberts on the Supreme Court. When Biden spoke out, he meant that there are two sets of rules: one for the nominees of Republican presidents, one for nominees he likes.

Let’s be clear: during the VP debates, Biden bragged about having created one of the most partisan debacles in memory, in which the Constitution has been held hostage to the power-hunger of the Democrats.

But Brooks lauds him. Can you have a negative number of brain cells? Sort of like matter and anti-matter?

[…] · Leave a Comment A battle between Stacy McCain and David Brooks is like a fight between a brown bear and a dead salmon The World’s Worst Newspaper Columnist descends from Olympus to favor unworthy mortals with his […]